A life Time of Love
by Lexi-Nou
Summary: A collection of Drabbles centered around Klaus and Caroline
1. Run

"Run." he smiles with a smirk so angular it could cut through the curtain of the night's sky. His eyes are ablaze with crimson and gold and his skin is as pale as the stars as he stares at the woman, her pretty pink dress and pearly white gloves. "One," he counts and she's gasping, her fear strangling her voice. She wouldn't scream, she couldn't. She's one of those, he decides and immediately is disappointed but continues none the less. A pretty woman is a terrible waste. "Two," he barks like the wild dog that he is and he howls to the moon with his head back and eyes closed as he listens to the clatter of tiny feet on cobbles. London air is like no other, especially in the 19th century.

"Run." he smiles with the same old smirk, his stance a little more relaxed, even a little lazy. The heat of a Spanish sun has had its effect upon him. His mouth is dryer than the Nevada desert and she is a soft water spring. Her dark curls and olive skin would look even more satisfying when he had mixed her blood with her sweat, her fear. She screams. It's a challenge. She screams all the way and he's only gotten to three.

What perplexes Klaus most is that this one walks away. She won't run because she is not afraid. He can see it in her eyes, in the raise of her eyebrows, the structure of her stance. There is no fear here to be found. He's struck by her defiance. Her strength. Her beauty.

"Talk to me," he asks but inside it feels like begging. "Come on, get to know me." He counts to ten in his own head, to settle the quivers within his stomach. "I dare you." he's changing tactics with this one. Playing a different game. She smirks briefly before rolling her eyes. This game has higher stakes and for once Klaus ponders whether the odds are stacked against him.

"Fine." she tells him simply and they sit side by side outside the Grill in Mystic falls. Its then that Klaus realises that she, Caroline Forbes will be the death of him.


	2. Picture Perfect

She doesn't know how he does it. Draws her from memory in such exquisite detail. She's a little bit breathless every time she sees it. It sends her somewhat stumbling. That's why she thinks, she keeps it, the drawing, locked away, buried in her drawer under papers and photographs.

"Indulge me." he asks one night as they walk. She's walking away from him, at least that's what she said. "Let me draw you Caroline." she had laughed and rolled her eyes, her head shaking in the breeze. "A beauty like yours needs to be captured." It makes her laugh, makes her tell him he's dreaming, that his charms are wasted and he should try another blonde. But he doesn't. He tries again, and again and again, for he is persistent. "Just a drawing Caroline." his hands raise declaring no daggers, no signs of war. Caroline knows the cause of the cats death, she just hopes she's not next to fall at the hands of curiosity.

He has her sit by the window, a little to the left, a lot of light. She thinks her eyes will water and struggles to stay still. He doesn't talk and she daren't speak so their silence is filled by scratches, outlines and shading. She wonders if anyone else has sat there, like this. If another woman's face has been the object of his attention. His affection. She half expects there to be thousands but half hopes she's the only one. It only makes for a lot of confusion and she prays it doesn't show in her face. She doesn't want her conflict to be caught in charcoal.

His fingers tips are black when he hands it to her, joins her on the seat with a soft smile. He does this to her, makes her insides constrict, makes her head light and for a fleeting second she thinks she can feel her heart beat. It's every inch as beautiful as the last, if not more and Caroline can't believe that this is her, that this is the way someone could see her. This is the way he sees her.

She sees him. In a different light. At the window with black fingers and a shy smile. She wonders how such beauty can come from hands that create such crippling chaos. "Without darkness," he tells her as if reading her mind. "How could one bask in the light?"


	3. Mask

She's impressed but she's wearing a mask. It's part of a game. Part of truth and part of lies. She can't let him see that inside she's smiling, that inside she feels like the teenage girl she longs to be. Her head is dizzy and her unbeating heart would flutter if it could (she just knows it), yet she's stone faced and pouting with her hands on her hips.  
"So..."she breathes out fully wrapping her coat around her body tightly. It's habit and it's a point. She's making a point that she can be human, that she's not a monster that she's different to him, but he's simply shaking his head with an exasperated sigh at her lack of appreciation and he takes it as an invitation.

She feels his hands upon her shoulders, his words in her hair as he points out across the nights sky into the distance.  
"What do you see?" A deep breath and she's squinting for effect. Cars. Trees. Lights. Houses. She can see the whole of Mystic Falls from up here. It's breathtakingly beautiful and she wants to take a photograph and capture it forever, in fact Caroline Forbes thinks this might become her new favourite place in the whole world.

"I'll tell you a secret," his accent is thick and heavy. It makes her dreamy, makes her think of holding hands whilst watching a sunrise, French cuisine and Italian music. Roses and champagne and the smell of grass after rain. "It's yours, all yours. The whole world. Right for the taking."  
They're lines from a movie, she believes. Too cheesy to be true but when she turns and looks at him he's smiling and it's a different smile. Not that cocky smirk that they're all used to. He's not what they're used to. He's not who she thinks. Not when they're alone. Not when she can just be Caroline and he Klaus, not when they can just be together.  
"And?" she can't help but be stubborn, be pushy, be demanding and a challenge, because when his eyes narrow she knows he's feeling and as long as he feels something she believes that they could have a chance. That maybe his heart will rule is head. That maybe her heart would be his.


	4. Secrets

She can't tell Elena and she definitely can't tell Bonnie. But Caroline is getting used to keeping secrets. She keeps her lips pressed and simply smiles when they sit and have coffee together. Bonnie wants answers, she wants to know what it means when Jeremy brushes by her the slightest touch of a hand, whilst Elena decodes Damon's words and insists that Stefan and she are ok. Caroline smiles with her lips pressed tight.

She wants to ask them what it means when he calls her love and lets a finger trail down her back. She wants to know why he holds her gaze with such intensity and why it makes her feel like her whole body is set on fire. She wants to know if it's ok that she's starting to forget the bloodshed he's caused and instead focuses only the feelings he creates in her stomach. She wants to tell them what it feels like when he's only inches away and he looks like he might kiss her.

She wants to know if it's right. To feel this way. About him. Most of all she wants to know if he kisses her, when he kisses her, if it's right to kiss back, let her hands get lost in dirty blonde curls, press her body against him so she can feel every inch, be completely overpowered.

Caroline decides, when swallowing the last of her coffee, watching Elena and Bonnie laugh loudly and carefree, that she needs direction but the only direction she has is to him.


	5. Need

Caroline's been contemplating. She's been letting her mind wonder, dreamed freely and unashamed. Caroline's been contemplating what it would be like to be kissed by him.

She can't look at him. Can't look at herself. She sees things she shouldn't. He has eyes she can get lost in, eyelashes long and lips full. He has a body that's lean and toned and a laugh that makes her stomach do somersaults.

The reflection in her vanity mirror is complex. She tries to see what he sees, beautiful, strong, full of light. Caroline sees a girl. Young 18, insecure and lost. She sees pain and fear and guilt and sadness.

"What do you want?" she shouts when he turns up in her room, lying on her bed like it's the most natural thing in the world.

"Thought we could have a little chat? Watch a movie? Paint our nails?" He mocks and she scowls.

"With me! What do you want with me?" She wants an explanation. Needs it. Needs to have it in black and white so she can re-read and file away in a box of answers that she can keep control of.

She doesn't need this. The feeling of floating as his arms wrap around her. The scent of a world outside her window upon his skin as he touches her cheek. She doesn't need his kiss but she wants it.

* * *

Kissing Caroline is like catching raindrops. Perfectly natural. It's like spring after the coldest of winters. Catching a butterfly with bare hands.

He loves the way her lips linger against his, how just the feeling of her hand at his face is like a sun melting the thaw inside of him. Kissing Caroline is more than he could ever have thought. It leaves him without words and floods him with colours and all of them are bright, so bright his eyes stay closed tight. She blinds him and he burns from inside out.

Klaus will kiss Caroline for an eternity, he doesn't even have a choice for the first time that their lips collide he realises that it was her that kissed him.


	6. Drowning

Their bodies are a blur but he can recount with slow motion every step that brought them here; from the beginning to now, because now is not the end, now is just a new chapter. For this is a journal full of moments and images, the things that writers write about and singers sing. This is what dreams are made of. This is what his dreams have been.

If you asked him to, he could, say every word she ever said because he's talked it over, their conversations, in his head. When it's been quiet alone in his bed, she's been there. He remembers the ways she wears her hair, the light as it captures her skin, the smell of her sweet perfume. He's drawn pictures on parchment from memory but they're burnt into the back of his eyelids. A scar he's willing to take.

They remove layers. Break down boundaries. Cross borders free falling. She's pulling him under, her hands around his neck. It's like diving without known depth and he's drowning in the essence of what it is to love and be loved and be alive when you are dead. In a thousand years a voice has never been so clear, a feeling so deep. She's more than a princess, he's far from a prince and this isn't in any way a fairytale but he prays, when she lies, her golden locks strewn across his bare chest, for a happy ending. A happily ever after.


End file.
